Forget #indyref; what does this mean for the EU?

Why are people surprised at our political establishment and it's army of civil servants failing to create a Plan Y? Accounting for every eventuality and possible outcome requires a certain finesse and creativity that is sorely lacking in the Bubble.

Still it is fun to see this all play out, with an almost chronic failing of attention on the EU implications.

Taking the lead from this Breitbart article we see a potentially devastating vision presented on a scale of soviet disintegration - but this isn't just of the UK but of the EU.

Say Scotland does leave and immediately applies to join the EU; that whole process takes several years of worming through the bureaucratic miasma in Brussels.

Then in the interim we see Catalonia and Basque regions in Spain opt for independence.

Then parts of Germany.

And Hungary.

And Islamic State(tm) annexes part of Turkey, scuppering further integration completely.

Then it becomes necessary to set up border controls with a non-covered Shengen-agreement non-EU state on our northern border.

Then in the offshoot Spanish territories.

This all rolls into an even bigger trade miasma with non-EU or even EEC-recognised states within central Europe.

Let's assume Cameron is still there (ha!)- do you really think his "renegotiation" ploy will get very far?

Me neither.

Scotland marks the beginning of the end for the EU as is; events are rapidly out-competing procedure and crisis management for it to survive.

Interesting days.

If 6 Were 9

Remember back when the coalition still hadn't markedly pissed off anyone? You know it was sometime in October/November; Osbo had just told us all calmly that DROSSTRAP would be the order of the day - the brakes going on for getting more indebted, with a view to a second term setting a plan to handle all those IOUs under the carpet - Zippy as business secretary was chatting up journalists and briefing against businesses his lefty constituents didn't particularly like; Cameron courageously and heroically arguing down the amount of our government money handed over to an increasing EU budget in this new age of austerity.

This last point, Cameron's first of many backtracks on the EU, thus tune being to push for a halt in it's budget or potentially a decrease, led to a 2.9% increase: equating to roughly £440 million extra in our contribution.

Man, those were the days weren't they?

So what has this budgetary increase now become?

[EU budget increase: £0.45Bn] + [Irish Bailout: £7Bn] + [Portugese bailout: £6Bn] = £13.45 BILLION in additional money's going to the Eurozone.

If £0.45Bn = 2.9% increase that equates to £0.225Bn per 1%; therefore £13.45Bn/£0.225Bn = a 59.77% increase in our net EU contributions.

Looked at another way the average cost of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning "Joint Strike fighter" - those jets we have had to cut the majority of our order of to make up budget cuts - come in based on the Wikipedia pages' figure at about £85 Million a piece.

So we've just given up a potential 158 brand spanking new and shiny fighter jets bailing out the unaccountble Eurozone colleagues an their ambitions for a single currency.

You still glad we got "cast-iron Dave" at the helm? More like pig iron; will crumble at the slightest hint of pressure onto a bed of taxpayers money.

Joke Of The Day #2. Sadly Not

David Cameron launched an extraordinary attack on his own civil servants last night for loading costs on to business, as he set out the ‘moral’ case for enterprise.

The Prime Minister expressed intense frustration with the failure of officials to understand that firms buckling under the weight of Labour’s red tape ‘frankly cannot take it any more’.

Brilliant you may think, and what does he intend to do about it?

‘If I have to pull these people into my office in No 10 to argue this out myself and get them off the backs of business, then, believe me, I’ll do it,’ he said.

Oh my! he's going to have stern words with them. No doubt he might even write them a letter.

Chancellor George Osborne’s March 23 Budget will include plans for at least ten new enterprise zones, with tax breaks and relaxed planning laws.

No doubt the new "enterprise zones" will be placed in the wary of some northern dossholes and will eventually become filled with QuANGOs and fake charities (a future blog there methinks); I'll ask the obvious though - if tax breaks encourage growth and entrepreneurship, then why stop at 10 geographic locations? Better yet why not have one: the UK?

Steps are also expected to try to increase trade with economies such as India and China, cut red tape and open up public sector contracts to small firms.

Now the second idea I like; opening up trade with the new tiger economies is a brilliant idea, but last time I checked we already were trading with them en masse - what business is that for the government anyway?

The first sentence though is pure boilerplate - every government since time immemorial has said they will "cut red tape" and/or "open up the public sector to competition" etc. - few have EVER gone much further than soundbite-land in the search for pastures new.

This remains a joke till Cameron actually puts something meaty behind his soundbites.

Like a plan for starters.

Sexism Sells Cheaper Car Insurance

European judges are expected to pass an equality ruling tomorrow that could cost British taxpayers almost £1billion.

They are poised to make it illegal to assess insurance premiums and pension payouts on the basis of a policyholder’s sex.
...
Female drivers under 26 would be the big losers, with some seeing premiums rise by 25 per cent at renewal. The premiums paid by young men will fall by around 10 per cent.

Pretty easy to understand why young men folk are becoming less gentile towards the fairer sex; it's court mandated.

Women, you have sought wholesale to put professional feministas on pedestals to speak for you; you didn't honestly think there would be no price did you?

The Clock Is Ticking

Following my last call for Euroslime Dave to tell the Strasbourg/Brussels consensus to piss off, comes this potential political IED:

Murderers and rapists locked up in psychiatric hospitals are challenging the British Government in a test case at the European Court of Human Rights which could see them win full State benefits.

The case will intensify pressure on David Cameron, after the Prime Minister pledged to review Strasbourg's influence on British law following the row over whether prisoners should have the vote.

The prisoners' votes issue was a ruse, as the Synonblog pointed out; a means for the CINO* Euroslime Dave to tickle faux-euroskeptic ears in the CINO* party and the real ones belonging to the swivel-eyed loons reading the The Daily Fail.

Now it looks increasingly like the unnaccountable, unelected ECHR will be testing how far there powers can take them, which is looking increasingly likely to be anywhere, tramping over the elected scum currently asleep at the wheel in our parliament of whores.

* = Conservative In Name Only

This Is Why You Don't Leave Cuts To Those In Line For The Chop

Dr. Fox: Hard at work or hardly working?

The Ministry of Defence has apologised after a reported 38 soldiers - including one serving on the Afghan front line - were sacked by email.

The troops, all of whom are warrant officers, were told they were being dismissed as ‘the Army has to make significant cutbacks’.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Team Cambo could do worse than fire the top 5 layers of the civil service and then instruct real reforms rather than kick this particular poo-ball into the long grass.

Noone likes a coward Liam and Dave; still, people like Disingenuous shits even less:

But shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the soldiers had been treated in a 'callous, cold-hearted, soulless' way and called on Government ministers to take responsibility for the incident.
Mr Murphy told the Today programme: 'We can't halt every redundancy in the Armed Forces, but this is no way to treat men and women who have served their country fearlessly for so many years.

Lest we forget, Murphy was the Minister for Europe, overseeing the biggest transfer of powers and money to the vast QuANGO that is the European commission and the empowerment act known as the Lisbon Treaty; essentially running interference while the EU takes control.

So now when £10Bn is to be wasted on an unnecessary waste policy while our Air Force, our Navy and our Army are expected to fight wars with little more than an active imagination.

Ye' gods.

Then May I Suggest That You Tell Them Politely To Bugger Off

The government says it has to end the ban on inmates voting, or face being sued for tens of millions of pounds.

Then can I firmly suggest, Coalition Masters, that you tell them to whistle for it.

After all, what are they gonna do - arrest us?

My Growth Agenda: Keep The State Busy Doing Nothing

Dr. Butler has been discussing "growth" with our lords and masters; apparently it didn't go too well:

I had one of those depressing meetings with government folk the other day, this one on growth. It started well enough, talking about the need for deregulation, competition policy, and the burden of employment law. The trouble is, though, that deregulation has been found too difficult. Nick Clegg's intended repeal of outdated laws has been put in a drawer because there's too much outdated law for him to get his head round, while Francis Maude's proposed bonfire of the quango is a damp squib. And as for employment law, well, much of it comes from the EU, and the rest is stuff that is easy to create but not easy to repeal, since all such laws build up dependency groups.

Perhaps I go beyond myself in saying this but in all likelihood this meeting was probably a way of satiating calls from the more traditional Thatcherites amongst the conservative right: 'Nick Clegg's people are talking to the ASI about ways to encourage growth' becoming a widely reported meme to the Torygraph and Fail, without the content or the extent of his success in convincing leviathan to cut itself down to size ever entering the popular discourse.

Now I know Dr. Butler isn't that daft to be taken for a ride and his very post illustrates how he won't let it lie but I'm starting to wonder if the answer to this problem shouldn't stem from creating more laws; starting with one very simple one in particular, preferably given some constitutional weight to it.

The law I am off course talking about is one designed to introduce sunshine clauses, both retrospectively and for all future laws and treaties; all existing laws and statutes must be debated and cleared by both houses before the end of this particular parliament and all new legislation will be reviewed in 2 parliaments time; any law not debated in this period will then cease to be a constituent of British law and attempts to uphold it could he challenged in court, with a view to all challenges being upheld as the law no longer applies.

The pressure and honus would then be on this current parliament to prove the usefulness of current laws and ease the burden of new lawmaking being a referential process to older faultier laws; likewise it would ensure the law is adaptive to the environment it finds itself in.

A side effect would be to ensure fewer laws come into effect from illiberal statutory instruments and by association from the EU without first concentrating the minds of our politicos on it's impact and synergy with our own common law system, as successive SIs rely on their power and enforceability through consent to previous law.

Ultimately it puts what our politicos minds on their collective sleeves; the Cleggeron rode in on a wave of liberal conservatism saying they were going to restore the supremacy of the individual over the collective, roll back state encroachment on our personal freedoms and through a lot of deceptive rhetoric have managed to carry on doing exactly the same thing as their predecessors; more laws, more gloss, state engorgement on more freedoms and noone really in charge other than an incumbent, unelected EU bureaucracy.

Let's see them back this up with a reform that will see actions rather than rhetoric.

Question For Those In The Know

Further to my post earlier today, Mr. Tebboth has directed me to this Private Members Bill from last year and I noticed this:

This Bill will be on the Order Paper for a Second Reading debate on 30 March 2012, although the House is not expected to sit on this day.

From a bill put forward 5 July 2010; is this what is known as "kicking it into the long grass" or are our MPs really that busy discussing other matters?

Beggars belief.

No Mr. Raab; MP's Are Out Of Control - Ours.

European judges have turned Britain into a ‘safe haven’ for foreign terrorists, the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws warned yesterday.
Lord Carlile said rulings by the European Court of Human Rights had undermined efforts to deport dangerous individuals intent on causing mayhem.
...
Last night Dominic Raab, Tory MP for Esher and Walton, said European judges’ law making was ‘out of control’.
He added: ‘It is not the job of an international court to re-write British laws on deportation, parental discipline or prisoner voting. It is high time we drew a line in the sand.’

But it is their job; the Westminster clique abandoned it's primary function - to make and amend law as the need arose - to technocrats, QUANGOs and the EU; the result has been empowerment of the unelected chattering classes, the professional lawyer and the politician who chooses soundbites over substance and the resultant levels of debt, public service stagnation in all but price and crony capitalist bailouts.

You've had well over thirty years to reverse these decisions at any point; an amendment tabled to the 1972 European Communities Act and democratic judicial reform at the UK level would make most judges think long and hard before making an unpopular decision like votes for rapists or pool tables for murderers.

So no more Mr. Raab, you did this by not challenging the status quo; you forget where power comes from - us.